“In peace and quiet, yes. Maybe they made a few trips, enough to bring enough people here for one small town, and then stopped for fear of being discovered. That's why this town seems so old-fashioned. I don't see a thing, myself, older than the year 1927, do you? Or maybe, sir, rocket travel is older than we think. Perhaps it started in some part of the world centuries ago and was kept secret by the small number of men who came to Mars with only occasional visits to Earth over the centuries.”

“You make it sound almost reasonable.”

“It has to be. We've the proof here before us; all we have to do is find some people and check it.”

The grass under their boots smelled from a fresh mowing. In spite of himself, Captain John Black felt a great peace come over him. It had been thirty years since he had been in a small town, and the buzzing of spring bees on the air lulled and quieted him, and the fresh look of things was a balm to the soul.

They set foot upon the porch and walked to the screen door. Inside they could see a curtain hung across the hall entry, and a crystal chandelier and a Maxfield Parrish^[38] painting framed on one wall over a comfortable chair. The house smelled old, and looked comfortable. You could hear the tinkle of ice in a lemonade pitcher. In a distant kitchen, because of the heat of the day, someone was preparing a cold lunch. Someone was humming under her breath, high and sweet.

Captain John Black rang the bell.

Footsteps came along the hall, and a kind-faced lady of some forty years, dressed in a sort of dress you might expect in the year 1909, peered out at them.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Beg your pardon,” said Captain Black uncertainly. “But we're looking for – that is, could you help us – ” He stopped. She looked out at him with dark, wondering eyes.

“If you're selling something – ” she began.

“No, wait!” he cried. “What town is this?”

She looked him up and down. “What do you mean, what town is it? How could you be in a town and not know the name?”

The captain looked as if he wanted to go sit under a shady apple tree. “We're strangers here. We want to know how this town got here and how you got here.”

“Are you census takers?”

“No.”

“Everyone knows,” she said, “this town was built in 1868. Is this a game?”

“No, not a game!” cried the captain. “We're from Earth.”

“Out of the ground, do you mean^[39]?” she wondered.

“No, we came from the third planet, Earth, in a ship. And we've landed here on the fourth planet, Mars – ”

“This,” explained the woman, as if she were addressing a child, “is Green Bluff, Illinois, on the continent of America, surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on a place called the world, or, sometimes, the Earth. Go away now. Goodbye.”

She trotted down the hall, running her fingers through the curtains.

The three men looked at one another.

“Let's knock the screen door in,” said Lustig.

“We can't do that. This is private property. Good God!”

They went to sit down on the porch step.

“Did it ever strike you, Hinkston, that perhaps we got ourselves somehow off track^[40], and by accident came back and landed on Earth?”

“How could we have done that?”

“I don't know, I don't know. Oh God, let me think.”

Hinkston said, “But we checked every mile of the way. Our chronometers said so many miles. We went past the Moon and out into space, and here we are. I'm positive^[41] we're on Mars.”

Lustig said, “But suppose, by accident^[42], in space, in time, we got lost in the dimensions and landed on an Earth that is thirty or forty years ago.”

“Oh, go away, Lustig!”

Lustig went to the door, rang the bell, and called into the rooms: “What year is this?”

“Nineteen twenty-six, of course,” said the lady, sitting in a rocking chair, taking a sip of her lemonade.

“Did you hear that?” Lustig turned wildly to the others. “Nineteen twenty-six! We have gone back in time! This is Earth!”

Lustig sat down, and the three men were taken by wonder and terror. The captain said, “I didn't ask for a thing like this. It scares the hell out of me. How can a thing like this happen? I wish we'd brought Einstein with us.”

“Will anyone in this town believe us?” said Hinkston. “Are we playing with something dangerous? Time, I mean. Shouldn't we just take off and go home?”

“No. Not until we try another house.”

They walked three houses down to a little white cottage under an oak tree. “I like to be as logical as I can be,” said the captain. “Suppose, Hinkston, as you originally suggested, that rocket travel occurred years ago? And when the Earth people lived here a number of years they began to get homesick for Earth. First a mild neurosis about it, then a real psychosis. Then insanity. What would you do as a psychiatrist if faced with such a problem?”

Hinkston thought. “Well, I think I'd rearrange the civilization on Mars so it looked like Earth more and more each day. If there was any way of reproducing every plant, every road, and every lake, and even an ocean, I'd do so. Then by some crowd hypnosis I'd convince everyone in a town that this really was Earth, not Mars at all.”

“Good enough, Hinkston. I think we're on the right track now. That woman in that house back there just thinks she's living on Earth. It protects her sanity. She and all the others in this town are the patients of the greatest experiment in migration and hypnosis you will ever see in your life.”

“That's it, sir!” cried Lustig.

“Right!” said Hinkston.

“Well.” The captain sighed. “Now we've got somewhere. I feel better. It's all a bit more logical. That talk about time and going back and forth turns my stomach upside down^[43]. But this way – ” The captain smiled. “Well, well, it looks as if we'll be fairly popular here.”

“Or will we?” said Lustig. “After all, like the Pilgrims, these people came here to escape Earth. Maybe they won't be too happy to see us. Maybe they'll try to drive us out or kill us.”

“We have superior weapons. This next house now. Up we go.”

But they had hardly crossed the lawn when Lustig stopped and looked down the quiet, dreaming afternoon street. “Sir,” he said.

“What is it, Lustig?”

“Oh, sir, sir, what I see – ” said Lustig, and he began to cry. His fingers came up, twisting and shaking, and his face was all wonder and joy and incredulity. He sounded as if at any moment he might go quite insane with happiness. He looked down the street and began to run, stumbling awkwardly, falling, picking himself up, and running on.

“Look, look!”

“Don't let him get away!” The captain broke into a run.

Now Lustig was running swiftly, shouting. He turned into a yard halfway down the shady street and jumped upon the porch of a large green house with an iron rooster on the roof.

He was beating at the door when Hinkston and the captain ran up behind him. They were all exhausted from their run in the thin air. “Grandma! Grandpa!” cried Lustig.

Two old people stood in the doorway.

“David!” they exclaimed and rushed out to embrace and pat him on the back and move around him. “David, oh, David, it's been so many years! How you've grown, boy; how big you are, boy. Oh, David boy, how are you?”

“Grandma, Grandpa!” sobbed David Lustig. “You look fine, fine!” He held them, turned them, kissed them, hugged them. The sun was in the sky, the wind blew, the grass was green, the screen door stood wide.

“Come in, boy, come in. There's iced tea for you, fresh, lots of it!”

“I've got friends here.” Lustig turned and waved at the captain and Hinkston, laughing. “Captain, come on up.”

“Howdy,^[44]” said the old people. “Come in. Any friends of David's are our friends too. Don't stand there!”

In the living room of the old house it was cool, and a grandfather clock ticked in one corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug with rose pattern, and iced tea in the hand, cool on the thirsty tongue.

“Here's to our health.” Grandma raised her glass.

“How long you been here, Grandma?” said Lustig.

“Ever since we died,” she said tartly.

“Ever since you what?” Captain John Black set down his glass.

“Oh yes.” Lustig nodded. “They've been dead thirty years.”

“And you sit there calmly!” shouted the captain.

The old woman winked. “Who are you to question what happens? Here we are. What's life, anyway? All we know is here we are, alive again, and no questions asked. A second chance.” She came over and held out her thin wrist. “Feel.” The captain felt. “Solid, ain't it?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, then,” she said triumphantly, “why go around questioning?”

“Well,” said the captain, “it's simply that we never thought we'd find a thing like this on Mars.”

“And now you've found it. I dare say there's lots on every planet that'll show you God's infinite ways^[45].”

“Is this Heaven?” asked Hinkston.

“Nonsense, no. It's a world and we get a second chance. Nobody told us why. But then nobody told us why we were on Earth, either. That other Earth, I mean. The one you came from. How do we know there wasn't another before that one?”

“A good question,” said the captain.

Lustig kept smiling at his grandparents. “Gosh,^[46] it's good to see you. Gosh, it's good.”

The captain stood up and slapped his hand on his leg in a casual fashion. “We've got to be going. Thank you for the drinks.”

“You'll be back, of course,” said the old people. “For supper tonight?”

“We'll try to make it, thanks. There's so much to be done. My men are waiting for me back at the rocket and – ” He stopped. He looked toward the door, startled.

Far away in the sunlight there was a sound of voices, a shouting and a great hello.

“What's that?” asked Hinkston.

“We'll soon find out.” And Captain John Black was out the front door, running across the green lawn into the street of the Martian town.

He stood looking at the rocket. The ports were open and his crew was streaming out, waving their hands. A crowd of people had gathered, and through and among these people the members of the crew were hurrying, talking, laughing, shaking hands. People did little dances. The rocket lay empty and abandoned.

A brass band played in the sunlight. Little girls with golden hair jumped up and down. Little boys shouted, “Hooray!” Fat men passed around ten-cent cigars. The town mayor made a speech. Then each member of the crew, with a mother on one arm, a father or sister on the other, were going down the street into little cottages or big mansions.

“Stop!” cried Captain Black.

The doors slammed shut.

The heat rose in the clear spring sky, and all was silent, leaving the rocket to shine alone in the sunlight.

“Abandoned!” said the captain. “They abandoned the ship, they did! I'll have their skins^[47], by God! They had orders!”

“Sir,” said Lustig, “don't be too hard on them^[48]. Those were all old relatives and friends.”

“That's no excuse!”

“Think how they felt, Captain, seeing familiar faces outside the ship!”

“They had their orders, damn it!”

“But how would you have felt, Captain?”

“I would have obeyed orders – ” The captain's mouth remained open.

Going along the sidewalk under the Martian sun, tall, smiling, eyes amazingly clear and blue, came a young man of some twenty-six years. “John!” the man called out, and broke into a trot.